


Meanwhile...

by things_that_matter



Series: CMBYN: Life with Ollie [40]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Babysitting, Comfort, Date Night, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Drama, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Intimacy, M/M, Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:21:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29399721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/things_that_matter/pseuds/things_that_matter
Summary: Elio and Oliver are enjoying their Valentine's Date night. Meanwhile, back at the ranch... how are things going with Ollie and the babysitter?
Relationships: Oliver/Elio Perlman
Series: CMBYN: Life with Ollie [40]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2094873
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13





	Meanwhile...

**Author's Note:**

> Last post for a few days. Thanks for reading!

“We _aren’t_ gonna be _friends_ ,” Ollie grumbled. He sat on the sofa with his arms crossed, a scowl on his face, and he emphasized his sentence with a little kick to the coffee table, which the babysitter ignored. Kate had been trying to engage him in a fun activity, or any activity at all, for almost an hour. She’d brought a Valentine’s Day craft they could make, but Ollie suddenly hated crafts. She checked the kitchen and found it well-stocked for baking, but Ollie now hated cookies, pies, and every kind of cake. She then suggested a movie, but Ollie hated television. Kate had a great deal of babysitting experience, but she couldn’t recall ever meeting a child who hated as many things as Ollie did. 

Oliver had warned her that Ollie could be difficult, but she hadn’t expected this level of resistance. When she realized she wasn’t going to be able to entice him to join her in any activities, she tried another approach. 

First, she went to the kitchen and baked the cookies she had hoped Ollie would want to help with. She thought that surely in that amount of time, Ollie would have worked through his negative feelings. But, when she took him a plate with a few warm cookies, he groaned loudly. 

“Why did you bring me something I hate?” Ollie asked. 

“I wasn’t bringing them to you, I was just showing you,” she covered, slightly embarrassed at being treated so impolitely by a little boy. To her surprise, Ollie did look at the cookies. She thought she might be making some headway.

But then Ollie turned away, crisply. “They aren’t even perfectly round, you know,” he informed her. 

Kate looked at her cookies with a critical eye. It was true, they weren’t perfectly round. “Of course not, I don’t make my cookies round. The sweetest and most delectable part of a cookie is around the edges, so you see…” she was trying to make something up on the spot, but Ollie interrupted her. 

“Ohhhhh, I get it,” he sat up a little, leaned over the plate, examining closely. He used a small finger to point to the nooks and crannies around the edges. “There’s more surface area around the edges this way.” 

Kate felt a tiny pang of guilt, not only for misleading the boy, but also for getting him so falsely excited about something. 

“You seem to know a lot about surface area,” Kate noted. She was being sincere. She was as impressed with Ollie and his use of the term ‘surface area’ as he was with her innovative cookie design. 

“Yeah,” Ollie shrugged casually. “That’s just because it’s math.” 

“Oh, do you like math?” Kate asked? 

Ollie’s face lit up for the first time since Kate met him. His beaming smile was contagious, and she couldn’t help but smile, too. 

“I love math!!” he exclaimed. “Math is super duper cool!” 

Kate tried not to reveal her own excitement, which matched, if not exceeded, Ollie’s. She wasn’t excited about math. She was excited because she’d accidentally stumbled upon something the child didn’t hate. 

“Me too,” Kate lied. She had studied philosophy, art, and history. She only took the math that was required, and she tried to take it during the summer, when the courses were shorter. She wracked her brain to think of _anything_ math related that remained in her memory. The little boy was staring at her expectantly, and Kate knew she didn’t have much time before he lost interest or worse, realized she was a fraud. 

Eventually, she decided to make use of her history background. “My favorite mathematician is Fibonacci,” she stated, trying to sound more confident than she felt. 

Ollie was interested, but he didn’t want to _look_ interested. He shrugged and reached for a cookie, which Kate noticed happily, but didn’t mention in case it caused him to change his mind. She felt as if she were trying to befriend a feral cat. 

“What did he do that was so great?” Ollie asked, nibbling the cookie as if it might be poisoned. 

So Kate spent the next thirty minutes telling Ollie literally everything she knew about Fibonacci, which wasn’t much. It was enough to fascinate the seven-year-old mathemophile, though. 

The moment she told Ollie that Fibonacci was Italian, he was all in. He listened with great fascination to her explain who he was, and what problem he was working on when he discovered the Fibonacci sequence. He grew even more fascinated when they used Kate’s phone to look up all of the different ways the Fibonacci sequence was observable in nature. Then they happened across a craft project. She saw Ollie looking at that page for a long time before clicking to the next one. 

“Ollie, do you want to make that Fibonacci craft?” she asked. 

Ollie looked at her with the most serious face, nibbling his third hated cookie. In his wide eyes, she could almost hear his internal dialogue. _Yes, he wanted to make it. No, he didn’t want to admit it._

“Well, I’m going to go make one,” she said decisively. She saw a brief smile move across his face. 

Kate and Ollie finally began to have fun together. They worked on the project, and while they did so, they talked. They talked about their interests. They talked about their families. Ollie shared with her about his parents, his life in Italy, and what it was like moving to the USA, and living with Elio and Oliver. He told her how difficult those first months were, and how he still cries for his parents but only late at night so Elio and Oliver won’t know, because he doesn’t want to hurt their feelings or make Elio sad. Kate was both moved and surprised by how freely he talked once he was comfortable with her, almost as if he’d been wanting to talk about these things for a long time but didn’t think he could. 

Kate knew that Oliver hoped that Ollie would be asleep when they came home. He had even offered a generous tip if he was. However, he had also instructed her not to force Ollie if he didn’t seem tired, because if Ollie became very upset, it would make it more difficult for them to get him to sleep when they returned. As she listened to him chattering on while making another Fibonacci craft (he’d already made one for Elio, Oliver, his teacher, and Olive), she just didn’t have the heart to make him go to bed. She felt that this was very likely the first time he’d really talked about his feelings in a long time, if at all. She thought he was a sweet and special little boy, to care so much about the feelings of his caregivers, but she also knew that kids needed to talk through what’s bothering them. She was conflicted about what to do. But then, thankfully, Ollie started to yawn. By the time he finished his last craft, he could hardly keep his eyes open. It was as if the stars aligned, because Ollie himself said, “I think I need to go to bed. Will you tell Elio and Oliver I said Happy Valentine’s Day?” 

Kate promised she would. 

“Will you give them their presents?” he asked, indicating the crafts he’d made. 

Kate promised she would. 

Ollie got up then and surprised Kate by giving her a hug. Then he surprised her even more by giving her the final craft he’d made after writing: _To My Friend Kate. From Your Friend Ollie. Happy Valentine’s Day._

Elio and Oliver were impressed when they got home to find Ollie asleep, the house clean, and they loved their Valentine’s Day gifts that Ollie had made for them. Oliver noticed that he had made one for Kate, too.

“I see you got a Valentine gift from Ollie, too,” he said, smiling. 

Kate looked a bit shy. “Well yes, I think he was just looking for an excuse to make more Fibonacci patterns,” she explained. 

Oliver shook his head, still smiling. “Is that why he wrote the sweet note?” he asked. 

Kate shrugged. “I guess I made a new friend,” she said as she gathered her things and prepared to leave. 

Elio and Oliver liked Kate very much, and hoped she would be willing to babysit again in the future. But, though they tried not to let it show, they were more than ready for her to leave, so they could celebrate the day properly. 

Happy Valentine’s Day! 


End file.
